Damaged Read online

  “Okay, you two, enough. I want to play,” he said, almost like a little boy who was being left out.

  Feeling brave I held the ball out and said, “If you want it so bad, come and get it.”

  He grinned and I knew that I was in trouble. He ran toward me and I screamed and threw the ball to his sister. He ignored it, letting it sail across to Callie. He grabbed me around the waist and took me down to the hot sand.

  “Get off of me,” I giggled, but God, I wanted him to do anything but.

  It had been way too long since I’d let him touch me. His hands were hot on my skin and his face was so close to mine that just the slight motion of my head would’ve brought our lips together. I’d missed kissing him and everything in my body screamed at me to just do it already. Braxton suddenly stopped tickling me and we were just lying there, looking at each other. My whole body was shaking and I knew he had to feel it. I wondered what he was thinking, but I was pretty sure I knew since I could feel him pressed up against my leg.

  “Ahem…not in front of the children,” Callie said.

  She was suddenly standing about two feet away and it was the wakeup call that I needed. Zoe had been right, I did need a chaperone. Ashamed at how close I came to giving in, I pushed him off of me and he rolled on his back onto the sand. He must have realized then that he had a pretty obvious erection because he suddenly rolled over on his stomach. Resting his head on his crossed arms.

  I started laughing.

  “Shut up,” he joked. “I’m getting hungry. You two want to go up to the house and raid Grandma’s cupboards?”

  “Yes, I’m starving,” Callie said.

  “Sure, sounds good,” I told him.

  Callie started toward the house and I followed her. We were about halfway there when she turned around and said, “Hey, Braxton, are you coming?”

  “I’ll be right there,” he said.

  “He’s so weird,” she told me. I laughed and agreed for her benefit. I was pretty sure I knew what he was waiting for.

  When Braxton got to the house, Callie and I had already found some lunchmeat and chips and were making sandwiches. Braxton grabbed us some sodas out of the fridge and we went into the little wicker decorated living room to eat.

  “This is a really cute house,” I told them. “Does your grandma use it much?”

  “She hardly comes here anymore at all,” Callie said. “She keeps it stocked in the summer for us, but she says she’s getting too old to make the trip out. She sends her housekeeper or nurse or whatever she is, out with the groceries and things. She really should sell it, but she won’t because she says she wants us to be able to enjoy it.”

  “That’s nice of her,” I said. Braxton and Callie exchanged a look. It was a sibling look that I didn’t understand.

  Braxton finally said, “She feels guilty.”

  Since he’d brought it up, I didn’t feel too nosy asking, “For what?”

  “For not taking us away from Dad when Mom died. It wasn’t her fault though. She was still working at the time. She was a nurse, and she worked a lot. She was heartbroken when Mom died and she was never really able to stand up to our dad. I don’t know if you’ve had the pleasure of meeting our father yet, but he’s a special guy.” I could hear the sadness in Callie’s voice as she tried to be callous and sarcastic about her father. It had to be hard on them both. I decided to change the subject.

  “Who’s this?” I asked, picking up a photo off the coffee table. It was in a silver frame and was of a skinny boy and a little girl with long blond hair.

  “That’s us,” Callie said.

  I looked at the boy again. He wasn’t just skinny; the poor little guy looked almost emaciated. “You didn’t eat much back then, huh?” I asked Braxton with a smile. He looked at Callie, who was smirking at him.

  “She ate enough for the both of us,” he said. “I could hardly get in a bite.”

  Callie stuck her tongue out at him and got up off the couch. “Wait until you see these,” she said, grabbing a photo album from the book case.

  “Come on, Callie, she doesn’t want to look at boring old family pictures.”

  “Sure I do,” I told him with a grin. “You know how interested I am in photography.”

  “Are you really?” Callie asked me.

  “Yeah, I just changed my major to photojournalism,” I told her.

  “Cool, I love to take pictures,” she said. “I actually took most of these.”

  “Which is why most of them show me in the most embarrassing light,” Braxton said.

  Callie chuckled. “The embarrassing light was never hard to catch when my brother was around,” she told me.

  “I’m going to get another coke,” he said.

  We were already looking at the album and neither one of us answered him. He sighed heavily and we still ignored him, so he left. I flipped through the album and watched as Braxton grew from a cute, chubby little baby to a long, skinny kid with acne and thick glasses. He was adorable.

  “My brother was a huge dork,” Callie said with a laugh.

  “I can hear you!” Braxton hollered from the kitchen.

  “I think you were cute,” I said.

  “Thank you,” he shouted then, still in the kitchen.

  “She said, ‘were.’ I think I’d concentrate on that word if I were you,” Callie told him.

  “Really funny, Callie!”

  She showed me other photos that she had taken of the beach and sunsets and one she took of the full moon over the water.

  “They are beautiful.”

  “You think so? I liked them.” She seemed pleased with the compliment of her work. I could identify with that. I loved it when people liked my pictures. I’ve never had a kid, but I likened it to what it must be like to have one and show them off. It was a good feeling for someone to like something that you created.

  “So what brand is your camera?” Callie asked me.

  I picked it up from the table next to the couch where I had sat it down and handed it to her. She held it gingerly and looked at it. “This is a really nice one,” she told me.

  “Yeah, I saved for a long time to buy it,” I told her. “Your brother wasn’t the only one who was a dork in school. I was so wrapped up in my acting classes and plays and photography, I forgot that being in high school was supposed to be about being popular,” I told her with a laugh.

  She lowered her voice and said, “Don’t tell Braxton because I won’t admit this in front of him, but I’m kind of the same way. I don’t really mind being a dork though, I like it better than I would being a Barbie, I think. He gives me money every time I see him and he tells me to buy clothes and things like everyone else. He never had that because Dad never had a job and he and Braxton just never got along anyways. He never stood up to him back then and that seemed to make Dad want to push him around that much more. Braxton’s changed a lot since high school. Once he started working out he was suddenly this pumped up stranger. I hardly recognized him, even his attitude changed.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked her.

  “He just got so full of himself. It was hard to even talk to him about anything that didn’t involve him directly. I mean, he was still always good to me and he went out of his way to make sure I always had everything that I needed but we weren’t as close as we were before. He’s been a lot easier to talk to though, since you moved in with him… Different.”

  “Different how?” I asked, curious.

  “He’s more like he used to be. He talks to me about me a lot more now and acts like he cares to hear what’s really going on in my life. There are still things I can’t talk to him about though. He’s such an older brother sometimes. Did you see him with that poor guy on the beach? I’m almost glad he doesn’t live at home anymore, I’d never get a boyfriend.” She smiled and then she said, “He really likes you, I can tell. I think you’re good for him.”

  I grinned back. “Do you have a boyfriend right now?” I asked her.
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br />   I liked hearing her say that he really liked me, but it was getting into dangerous territory with my emotions so I changed the subject. I was afraid if I kept hearing it too often, I’d just give into it. But after hearing more about him, giving in didn’t seem so bad.

  “I’ve been seeing this guy…but we haven’t made anything official…” she started whispering again, but Braxton came back in the room.

  “Hey, no whispering,” he said, playfully. “Were you talking about me?”

  Callie threw a pillow off the couch at him and said, “You’re the least interesting subject we could have chosen.”

  Rolling his eyes and tossing the pillow back he said, “If you two are finished walking down the sidewalk of my seedy past how about we take some snacks out and watch the sun go down?”

  He seemed embarrassed about me looking at his old pictures.

  “We can talk later,” Callie said with a wink. “I’ve got lots of dirt on him.”

  “Shut up,” he told her. Then he looked at me and said, “She doesn’t know anything and she’s a pathological liar.” He tossed a beach towel to her. “Let’s go.”

  We went outside and laid our towels on the sand. The sun was just starting to dip into the ocean and it cast an orange hue across the water. It was unbelievably gorgeous. I had to take a few pictures of it, I couldn’t resist.

  The night was really warm and quiet and we lay on the towels and talked about nothing in particular for a while and ate some chips and dip. Before long, Callie had lain her head down and gone to sleep.

  “She’s out, thank God,” Braxton quipped.

  I smiled. “I like her and she thinks a lot of you.”

  He looked at me with his eyebrows pulled together. “How in the world can you tell that? She’s such a little smart-ass I thought that someone who didn’t know better might think that she hates me.”

  “I don’t know this first hand because I’m an only child, but I think that’s how brothers and sisters show their love, am I right?”

  “I guess,” he said, looking at his little sister. “She’s an okay kid as far as teenagers go. They kind of all give me the creeps.”

  Whatever he said didn’t matter; I could see it in his eyes. He was full of pride when he looked at her and I knew that he loved her otherwise he wouldn’t take care of her. I wish that I could see what he thought of me in his eyes as easily. I told Zoe that I knew he cared about me and that much was true. But did he really love me, or like Zoe thought, was it just another game?

  He reached out for me and I easily fell into his embrace. He pulled me up against him and we finished watching the sun go down. I didn’t think I’d ever wanted to kiss anyone as bad as I wanted to kiss him, but I didn’t. I contented myself with how good it felt with his arm around me rubbing my shoulder and my head against him. I still had some serious thinking to do before I started letting my lips make my decisions for me.

  CHAPTER SIX

  BRAXTON

  A few days after we went to the beach, Emmi was at least talking to me again. I was making myself tread lightly with her but things were getting more normal, we even shared a few meals together. She needed to come around in her own time and as impatient as I was, I wasn’t going to try and force anything with her. If I scared her completely away I would hate myself forever. She was afraid; I could see that whenever we were alone together. She’d been hurt before and badly and that was what she expected from me, unfortunately. I was still trying to suck it up and prove to her that’s not my intention. I wasn’t ever going to be the guy that her new boyfriend wanted to beat up in a bar.

  It was strange for me, but now that I knew for sure that I was in love with her, and I really wanted only her, it was easier for me to wait. I had a big fight though and I couldn’t afford to be distracted. I wasn’t about to be used as someone’s punching bag this time. My body was almost completely healed from the last fight and I was hoping to keep it that way. I had everything Sam and I went over this week in the forefront of my mind.

  When I got to the warehouse the first thing that Sam asked was, “Is your mind clear of everything except this fight?”

  I let myself have one last vision of Emmi. I pictured her in my mind and slowly raked my eyes from the top of her silky dark hair, down over her long, sweet neck and across her chest and those nipples that my mouth was craving. I saw that soft, flat belly and I let my eyes travel down each thigh, one at a time. I let them travel back up between her legs and I licked my lips and thought about how sweet she tasted. I took a deep breath and put those thoughts away. I looked Sam in the eyes.

  “I got nothing in there but winning this fight, and preserving my good looks in the process.”

  “Well,” Sam said, in true Sam form, “one of them is definitely possible. I think you’re too late for the other. Don’t forget everything we worked on. Bob and weave and punch, bob and weave and kick. Take the upper hand as soon as you get out there and keep it.”

  “I got it,” I told him. “I’m not coming away looking like hamburger meat tonight. I missed my pretty face for almost two weeks after the last fight.”

  Sam rolled his eyes. “I guess whatever you use as motivation, as long as it works.”

  When I heard my name called out by the announcer, I jogged out to the cage with Sam at my side. I didn’t look right or left, I didn’t want to see the crowd. I was afraid that I’d catch sight of Emmi, who I knew was here taking pictures. She hadn’t told me that she was coming, but I’d glimpsed her out in the audience when I first got here. If I saw her again, I would get distracted. My head was in the fight and I had every intention of walking away from it headed for the final four.

  I got into the cage and Sam gave me another pep talk and a few more pointers on how to fight submissively and still win. He kept telling me that this far into the game there was no shame in it, especially if I came out the victor.

  I got myself psyched up, I was ready for this and the fast paced loud music and the sounds of the crowd in the background were egging me on. It was chaotic and loud and I fed off of it. When the bell rang I went out to meet my opponent. His name was Ernie Vasquez and he called himself The Tequila Kid. He was from Texas and he was as hungry for this as I was. I could see it in his face. I could also see traces of his last fight on his face. I guess I wasn’t the only one who got pounded in my last fight and still won.

  The referee gave us his spiel and we bumped fists and went back to our corners to wait for the buzzer. The Tequila Kid looked a little nervous. That could go either way, depending on where he put that energy. When I heard the bell again I moved forward, but I didn’t walk right into the punches he started throwing as soon as he came out. Instead I started dancing as Sam called it. I moved my feet in time with the music and I ducked and dodged, picturing the ropes dangling above my head and getting in a punch or a kick every now and again. Nothing spectacular from either one of us, but when the bell rang, indicating the end of the first round, I was blood free. Tequila on the other hand was nursing a split lip. I was on the road to the round of four. I could feel it.

  Round two was a lot of the same. The crowd was screaming at us, they were here to see blood and we weren’t exactly giving it to them. I could tell Tequila was getting pissed off and the punches he was throwing were coming at me harder and faster. It was getting tougher to dodge them because I was getting tired. My only saving grace was he was getting tired too. He landed a few good ones on the side of my head, thankfully on the ear that wasn’t still sore from the last fight. I got kicked in my bad knee once and I started to go down but I could hear Sam yelling at me in the background telling me to “Stop being a pussy” and get back in there. I summoned everything in me and kept going, knowing we had to be only seconds from the bell. When it rang, I was sweaty, exhausted and a little bit bloody but nothing like I’d been in the last fight, and Tequila was just about worn completely out.

  “You got this, kid, he’s tired and I can see that resolve he had in his eye
s fading. Get in there and take him out quick this round. Knock him on his ass and pin him down. You got the upper body bulk on him. I give him fifteen seconds of you on top of him before he taps out,” Sam said.

  I was nodding and downing my energy drink. My eyes were begging me to just let them scan the crowd once, quickly. They only wanted one little glance at Emmi and then they promised they would be good. I stood tough though and I kept my eyes on my opponent and my goal in sight.

  The bell rang and I went in with tunnel vision. It was just me and Tequila and I was going to be the only man left standing. He came out dancing this round. He was going to give me a taste of my own medicine. I was okay with that, I just danced along with him for a while.

  When he looked like he was getting a little sluggish again, that was when I struck. I sent my hand out, palm up and I smacked him upside the head, hard. When he was still stunned from that one, I brought up my fist on the other hand and caught him on the chin with an upper-cut. He stumbled back, but he didn’t fall. That was okay, because I wasn’t done yet. I did a one-eighty and raised my leg as I came around, catching him full-on in the small of his back. That one did it, and he hit the floor fast and hard.

  I reacted immediately, dropping down next to him and wrapping my arm around his neck. I pulled back on his head, not enough to knock him out but just enough to make him struggle a little bit for air. He fought me with everything he had left for the first minute or minute and a half. I could feel his body giving in; his mind just hadn’t caught up with it yet. His trainer was screaming at him, his fans were screaming at him. They were all telling him to get up, like it was just that easy. When he finally blocked them all out and accepted that this fight was over, I almost felt sorry for the guy as he raised his hand and lowered it to hit the floor…twice. He tapped out.

  The referee was pulling me off of him before I knew it and I had to grab hold of the cage to help myself up. I wasn’t as tore up as last time, but my knee was still throbbing and standing up was no small task. The crowd was screaming my name and I loved the sound of it.